Amour

Michael Haneke’s Amour, winner of the Palme d’Or and the most finely wrought work by this usually heavyhanded director, is an unsparing depiction of the last months of a husband and wife—Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva)—both classical music teachers who, in their eighties, are still active, cultured cosmopolitans. That suddenly changes when Anne suffers a stroke and is paralyzed on one side of her body. Georges devotes himself to her care. Haneke details both Georges’ labors and Anne’s frustration and embarrassment at not being able to feed or bathe herself or perform her bodily functions unassisted. As Anne declines, she loses the power to communicate through language and although on occasion she expresses the desire to die, her body continues to fight for life. Anyone who has lived with a person who is dying will recognize the accuracy of Haneke’s depiction and also that nothing comparable has ever been shown in a fiction film.

What makes Amour not only bearable but cathartic is the beauty of the filmmaking and the delicacy of the performances. Haneke’s control of the medium honors the characters and the actors who portray them, rather than reducing them to pawns in his game, as has often been the case in his previous films. Riva and Trintignant, for more than 50 years icons of French cinema, show incredible courage by rehearsing on screen the way their own lives may end in the not too distant future.—Amy Taubin, Film Comment